I have a question, regarding the proper procedure for backing up VM's (Hyper-V). I want the simplest and fastest solution for restoration, should I be backing up individual VM's and trying to create a one time VM from the symantec product. Or, should I backup the entire VM host and create a new VM with the VHD file that was backup up.

I’ve tried backing up the entire VM host server and creating a new VHD from one of the backups and it works well with a single drive VM. The other method of creating a one time VM from the backup, not so well.

Reason for this email, I tried creating my exchange server from the VHD's that were backed up, I’m having issues with some services not starting. My exchange server has 3 virtual dynamic drives, one the C drive, a drive for Logs and one for the store, quite a common scenario actually. I’ve recreated the VM environment exactly in the settings as well.

Keep in mind, I am trying to start-up this exchange server off the domain as a test, it could be that the services not starting are related to finding and locating the domain, although I doubt it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated; I want to be able to rely on this scenario in case of a disaster.

Cheers